The Same Thing

One of my colleague came into my office and asked me if I would help with a request she'd received in the mail. It was a typical research request and I said I would take it.

I put the letter and accompanying copy of the image into my "active research requests" file and didn't really take a look at it until later. When I opened it, I thought there was something familiar about it, but didn't really think twice.

The person had asked me to look at his "pen and ink drawing" of a street scene. I could tell right away this wasn't a hand-drawn sketch, but rather an engraving or intaglio print of some sort. This was one of those requests where several letters in the signature were difficult to make out as well, so coming up with the name was going to be difficult at best.

I thought I'd try doing some searches based on the title of print which was also written out, but clearly legible. It was a French city and street name. This is something I love about Google... I start to type in my search terms and it remembered a search I'd done before. Okay, now I know I've looked at this before for sure.

I'm a pack-rat and keep copies of all of my research requests - just for occasions like this. I went back through my files and found a request on the same piece from nearly two years ago!! Interestingly, it was not from the same person. But it was, however, from someone living in the same city.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm betting the person I helped with this before had sold it to the person I'm helping now.

Earlier, I told the original requester I tried the title, and a number of variations on what I thought the name could be. I do remember spending hours on this. Nothing, absolutely nothing came up. With this being the case, it's fair to say there's not really a market for this person's work.

I'll be telling this person the same thing. Only this time, I won't be putting in hours of searching ahead of time.